No Way Back
by KeelieThompson1
Summary: 1st in "One Day at a time" series. Sherlock always had an influence on John, so when he "dies" and John finds his secret stash of cocaine, one thing leads to another. And John is far too proud to admit just how far he is falling or ask for help. Afterall, who is there left that he can really ask? Pre-slash Johnlock. READ WARNINGS!


No Way Back

Chapter Summary: Sherlock always had an influence on John, so when he "dies" and John finds his secret stash of cocaine, one thing leads to another. And John is far too proud to admit just how far he is falling or ask for help. Afterall, who is there left that he can really ask?

Warnings for homelessness, drug addiction and prostitution and all that comes with it.

* * *

It had been a truly stupid idea.

In fact at no point had there been a part of John that thought it was a good idea. It had been like watching a film; he saw his hand wrap the tourniquet round his arm, saw himself tighten it with an expert hand. There had been a moment of disbelief as the needle slipped through skin and poured what his mind could only define as poison into his veins.

Everything was sharp, the world was quick and wonderful; it was a glimpse of what he had lost and would never get again. Just sitting in the flat was like walking backwards in time to him.

Cocaine and Sherlock; they kept the world at bay and drowned out the grey.

The comedown was horrendous. The world was so slow and miserable again and so utterly wretched and empty. His hand shook and his leg throbbed.

Using the drug wasn't helping; he knew that. He knew it was the drug that was bringing these things back, destroying his body inch by inch but when he slipped the needle in again it felt like a cure, like blessed relief.

And then he had run through Sherlock's hidden supply.

Enough, he told himself. Enough now.

* * *

He knew enough about drugs to know he had been lucky not to get addicted from those three times he had used. Life slipped back into monotony and he moved out, despite Mrs Hudson's protests; scared enough by the idea that just the physical longing he felt sitting in the flat would prompt him to rifle through the remainder of Sherlock's things to find his dealer.

A clean break; that was what he needed. To take control, to lose the smell of Sherlock on his own terms rather than watch it fade from the flat. To take what Mycroft didn't hold onto and dump it in a charity shop, to not sit and stare at the skull and wonder what secrets it had heard.

John needed some semblance of control.

* * *

Dreams were vicious creatures. The subconscious mind was an utter bastard.

John Watson dreamed at night. He saw the smile that was as rare as a clear night sky in London, he saw the coat that beckoned as Sherlock raced around a corner after the next great chase; the look.

The look was the worst thing. It had developed slowly-shit, no that was a lie. It had been there on their first night as room-mates, though John hadn't known that at the time. John had just been a Grade A Twat at noticing it.

Those indescribable eyes would narrow, deducing or reasoning or something and then, as if against their will, would flicker down John; to his lips, his neck, his hands as if momentarily distracted, before the lips would firm and the eyebrows would draw together in frustration.

And the look had developed over time; Sherlock would crowd in close or delight in startling him.

Then it had stopped, suddenly and without rhyme or reason. As if Sherlock had just shut down and refused to engage.

Even John wasn't that much of an idiot; he knew what it all meant as he dreamt and saw the signs he had missed. Sherlock had always complained that sentiment clouded one's judgment, blurred reason and logic with doubt and hope. Sherlock had been subtly testing the waters and it had been too fucking subtle for John to notice.

They were both idiots.

So Sherlock must have moved on, dismissed the possibility because John couldn't see Sherlock mooning over anyone for long.

What might have happened had John noticed?

He'd never know now.

* * *

Sherlock had once said that there were days of unending boredom; that he had suffered from bouts of depression as a youth and it was always something small, something nagging that pushed him towards a needle.

For John, it was something big.

* * *

"It was you that killed 'im," the assassin sneered.

John had been called by Mycroft (a call that threatened to send him back into grief anyway) to help identify a man that had moved in across the street to the police. Mycroft had been working endlessly to clear Sherlock's name; no stone was left untouched, no probing questions left unasked.

It wasn't that John wanted to let Sherlock's name remain tarnished; it was simply that the mention of it was a wound like no other.

"I'm sorry?" John asked staring at the bald man who looked like he could knock a building over if he took it a good speed.

"The boss," Mycroft's agents held the assassin with a glance at Mycroft who must have made some movement to allow the man to talk. "It was how he made that nutter jump. He talked to 'im. Told 'im we would go after you and the old woman and the pig."

John stared at him, vaguely translating the assassin's words into sense.

_Oh god! Moriarty threatened Mrs Hudson and Lestrade._

"Boss said he didn't really need the other two." The assassin leaned in close. "Just you would have done it. Fucking poof was so over the moon for you he'd have done anything."

John couldn't move, couldn't think. No words came out as Mycroft clipped an order to have the assassin taken away and handed to the police with the evidence just recorded.

Mycroft kindly had him dropped off at his new flat half an hour later. By the time it was eight o 'clock John had found and paid for a hit of cocaine.

This time it didn't work. It made everything come into focus, made him see everything and made the feelings unbearable.

_"Heroin is like stepping into oblivion,"_ Sherlock had once said. _"Everything just slips away and it's quiet."_

He was right.

* * *

Within three weeks John had a straight choice; heroin or rent.

Obvious choice really.

A cheaper flat, a less demanding job where people wouldn't spot the signs.

The only problem was that such jobs meant less pay which meant less heroin.

* * *

John tried Harry's drug of choice – alcohol. But that was just as expensive when done in large quantities and a hell of a lot less private.

God, he needed to get out of London.

* * *

Within a year he was back; broke and exhausted with life. He snuck back onto the streets he had once ran through, breathless with laughter and wondered exactly how the hell he had managed this.

Sherlock would be so disappointed, his mind supplied as he curled up at the shelter. So utterly and completely disappointed.

* * *

Getting clean when you were homeless and penniless was both easy and bloody difficult. John couldn't afford anything but no-one believed that he wanted to change his life and he was far too ashamed to give his name and reveal his past, even when Mycroft's campaign finally won the media over and they published a retraction.

He had been useless. And just that thought made his hand refuse to stop shaking for hours.

* * *

There were levels of low he discovered. Low had been admitting he had a drug problem and that he had no-one he could go to, no-one he could tell because he felt so utterly ashamed of himself for not being able to cope. Rock bottom had been going out onto the street and leaving everything that he couldn't carry because he had no money left. Disgusting had been returning to London because it was more acceptable to be homeless there and being so aware that he looked exactly like what he was; a homeless drug addict.

Drugs staved off hunger and lasted a little longer than a meal. The charities that fed him were a god send because there were days when he could pretend he was going to struggle back to his feet and find a way back up.

He was kidding himself on those days of course; there was no getting up. How could there be when he didn't have a suit or couldn't get clean to go to an interview; how could he when he couldn't use his own name out of shame and fear that someone he knew might recognise him?

He saw Lestrade and Donovan once, at a crime scene across the way from the shelter. He hesitated and then turned away, praying to anything that they hadn't seen him.

They weren't even looking.

* * *

John had been wrong.

Disgustingly low was not getting to the shelter in time when it was winter and raining endlessly. Which meant not getting a meal and staying awake all night because he needed a fix and needed food and drink and sleep.

Disgustingly low was offering his mouth to the dealer who sneered at him with glee because he had predicated for months John would get to this stage.

Still, what was left of the doctor in him insisted on a condom; and the dealer shrugged and didn't seem to care one bit.

Homeless, addict, prostitute.

Sherlock wouldn't even recognise him.

But that night John almost managed to OD and finally slept for hours.

* * *

Sherlock was alive.

John stood, watching the news on a television blaring out of the window in a shop. A distant part of him felt a flicker of anger, but it was so far away, so very far away.

Closer, stronger, was the inescapable feeling of shame. A deep, inescapable shame that Sherlock had managed to fight back while John had merely collapsed and failed.

He stared at the news channel for an age, waiting for another mention of Sherlock.

There was nothing.

* * *

He gathered the newspapers and kept the pages with Sherlock's interview in his threadbare pocket.

Whether Sherlock intended to or not, he would find John. The bloody homeless network was already starting up again and it wouldn't take long before someone looked at him properly.

So John had a number of choices.

He could leave; save up what he could and leave London. He could walk up to the door at Baker Street and own up to it all or he could just dump himself in the Thames and end it all.

So far gone was he that he ignored all the options and hunted down as much Heroin as possible to blur the world away.

* * *

Two months he managed.

"Want cash?" Terry asked as they walked out of the kitchens, hunger pains almost fading from their breakfast.

John sighed. "I'm not selling anything," he muttered.

There had to be some limits. John may have fucked up his own life but he wasn't taking anyone down with him.

"Nah, nuffin' like that," Terry insisted.

Warning bells went off when John saw the coat. That beckoning coat that still haunted his dreams.

It was too late to run, too late to turn away. John settled for looking unwillingly miserable and down at the ground.

Sherlock barely glanced at him. "Found anything?" he asked Terry.

"Nah, not yet," Terry said. "Give us a bit more time,"

Sherlock looked away in anger. "And more money I imagine," he added, shaking his head.

"Couldn't hurt."

Sherlock thrust a wad of notes at Terry. "You will not get a penny more until I get a lead, so you had best not waste it all on pot," he snarled, before spinning away and flagging down a taxi.

"Dick," Terry muttered as he counted the money. "Kind of good though ain't it? To not be looked at with pity. Bastard don't seem to care about anything other than his precious information."

John his eyes away from the taxi that had taken Sherlock away. "Yeah…" he said, trying not to let his mind utterly spiral at the realisation that Sherlock hadn't even recognised him. "Anything for a case right?"

Terry looked at him sharply, "You recognise 'im?"

"Sherlock Holmes," John couldn't help the smile, "The Consulting Detective."

Terry nodded, "Yeah, back from the dead." There was a bitterness in his voice that John could sympathise with. They had no chance of being resurrected. "Anyway, it ain't a case."

John frowned questioningly.

"He's looking for that mate of his, the doctor. Guy's disappeared."

John couldn't help it.

He laughed until he cried.

* * *

That night he sat by the steps and waited. There was a perfect view of the park where Sherlock had paid Terry and it kept John in shadow.

It was so easy to picture in his mind. Sherlock, lying on the couch at the flat in his dead mummy position: thinking. Then there would be the epiphany and Sherlock would see what he had missed, clicking all the pieces together like some scattered jigsaw puzzle.

And, sure enough just before dawn, Sherlock came barrelling into the park. John watched as Sherlock found his way to what was probably the exact spot John had been standing in.

What was going through his head? Had he deduced everything or was he blinded by the simple realisation that it had been John standing before him earlier; Sherlock did tend to have a one track mind at times.

Tears trickled out and down his cheeks silently as Sherlock seemed to be reconstructing their meeting in his mind, pacing in that familiar way that made John want to smile. He sat and watched, head against the rails, keeping utterly silent.

The sun was rising.

But Sherlock left before the shadows faded.

* * *

It would be impossible to hide now. Sherlock would weed him out by the end of the day. Instead John begged a shower off of one of the volunteers and used his usual drug money to buy clothes from a charity shop.

He didn't recognise himself in the mirror as he started to hack away at the beard and hair that had grown wild and unruly. Until he shaved it was like looking at a stranger.

Not that shaving made it that much better. He'd lost so much weight; he'd never been this thin in his life, never so without muscle or so pale.

Or so old.

What the hell was he doing?

For a moment he stared down at the razor and imagined dragging it across his wrists. What was Sherlock going to want with him now? John Watson, soldier, doctor, blogger and friend was all but dead these days.

He held on to the sink for dear life, steeling himself.

He could do this. Sherlock would meet him, see that he was nothing now and would lose interest.

Pulling himself together John walked out of the bathroom and thanked Beth.

* * *

221B was…painful.

Mrs Hudson stared at him as if he were the one who had returned from the dead and then immediately fed him tea and biscuits. He restrained the urge to eat as many as he could and pocket the rest.

He was not some mindless rat.

Sherlock had made a mess of the flat, as usual. The violin was out and pages of music lay scattered about as if hit by a whirlwind. When John bent to pick them up he could see the endless scribbled compositions written in Sherlock's hand and smiled fondly at the memory of watching Sherlock actually play the violin rather than torture it.

Tidying was better than just waiting. Within two hours it was all neat, and curiously without experiments either on the table or in the fridge.

Coming back from the dead must be busy work if Sherlock didn't have time to indulge that side of his nature.

Curious, John popped his head into Sherlock's room to see if it was as fastidiously neat as ever (which had always pissed him off when they had lived together) but it was untouched.

Utterly untouched, as in still in the same state John had left it in when he had moved out.

A sudden suspicion hit and John slowly climbed the stairs to his room.

_Oh Sherlock._

It was clear that Sherlock had moved into John's old room. There was a map, pinpointing his last locations before he had dropped off the grid. The assassin that had been following him had been killed by a fortuitous freak accident according to notes but Sherlock seemed to have been scraping together any piece of information he could to find John.

It was all suspiciously lacking in information. John had suspected that Sherlock would have found at about his little problem within two minutes of looking. But no, leads that Sherlock had rightly pieced together had fallen apart before Sherlock could find anything.

A note, pinned to the wall drew John's attention and his heart skipped a beat.

_You missed something at the park today. SM_

Sherlock hadn't realised it had been him in the park; that hadn't been why he had returned.

It was too late now to go back.

John turned back to the search. Sentiment had clouded Sherlock's thinking; he was looking for the man he had once known, a man who barely existed any more.

A creak on the floorboards made John close his eyes.

"John?"

How had he once done this? What would John Watson say?

"This is quite impressive." John tapped the map.

Another creak as Sherlock stepped forward.

Insanely John wanted to step forward, through the wall, anything to keep the distance, to keep Sherlock from seeing.

"You've been ill," Sherlock breathed. "You look…John...what…how…"

God he couldn't turn around. Couldn't.

"I should um…" John tried to work out how to leave without letting Sherlock see his face, convinced it would be an open book to the detective. "Go, I should-"

A hand touched his shoulder, poked it almost as if the owner expected his hand should have gone straight through John.

Then there was a strangled gasp and Sherlock seemed to thud to the floor behind him, head pressed into the back of John's knees.

John stared at the map, tears rising again.

_Don't see, don't see, don't see,_ he begged.

But he felt Sherlock suddenly freeze and a long elegant finger raised his trouser hem.

No socks. Ill-fitting shoes. John could practically hear the deductions as Sherlock's fingers tightened on his trousers.

There was silence as John took deep strangled breaths and Sherlock's started to quicken alarmingly.

"You…the park…" Sherlock breathed in horror.

John nodded and then realised that Sherlock might not be able to feel that. "Yeah…" he said, "So…um…yeah." He wondered how long it would take Sherlock to dismantle all of this and move back downstairs. "I'll go," he breathed eventually.

Sherlock pulled back, still on his knees behind John and John took that as-

But no. Hands were suddenly pulling at him, fiercely yanking at him to drag him down but John refused to turn, refused to look at Sherlock and see…see…

Sherlock's arms wrapped around him, seeming to accept for the moment that John wouldn't turn. Instead, they ended up in an awkward sprawl on the floor with John half in Sherlock's lap, Sherlock's arms wrapped around him and Sherlock's face buried in his neck.

There were damp patches.

God, Sherlock was crying.

"How?" Sherlock eventually seemed to ask. "How did…How?"

John shook his head. "I have no idea," he answered honestly.

"Stay," Sherlock begged in his ear. "Stay."

* * *

John couldn't. The bed was too soft and smelled like Sherlock. When he went downstairs though, Sherlock was sat against the door, watching the staircase.

"Heroin or cocaine?" Sherlock asked in the darkness.

"What?"

"Which are you addicted to, heroin or cocaine?"

"Heroin." John replied after a moment.

"You started on the cocaine then."

John tried to remind himself that it had been Sherlock's cocaine he had started on, tried to remind himself that Sherlock had been no better than him at one time.

But Sherlock had been able to afford the habit, had functioned with it.

The light switched on and John stared at the floor as Sherlock stood opposite him.

A hand reached out and fingers skimmed his jaw, lingering on the bruises John had received from cruel hands that had pushed his mouth further onto them.

"I'm so sorry," John whispered still staring at the floor.

There was a hitch of breath and Sherlock's hands slid under his chin, trying to finally get John to meet his eyes.

So John did the only thing he could.

He closed his own eyes.

"John, look at me."

Shaking his head John pressed his lips together, desperate not to let anything spill out and drag Sherlock in.

Hands cupped his cheeks firmly, "John," Sherlock's voice sounded both stronger and utterly wrecked. "Look at me now."

"I'm sorry," John mouthed again.

"Why do you keep apologising?" Sherlock sounded angry now. "What on earth do you have to-"

"Because you threw yourself of a building to keep me safe and I couldn't…" John sucked in a sob, "I threw it all away when you had done so much to keep me alive."

Sherlock drew in a startled breath. "How did you know that?" he asked.

"Mycroft…when he caught Mrs Hudson's assassin, he told me."

The fingers on John's face tightened in fury. "I'll kill him," Sherlock hissed angrily.

John shook his head. "Pointless now."

Sherlock made some movement but John couldn't tell what it was with his eyes closed.

"What did you say?" Sherlock asked.

"Pointless," John said, almost without voice. "I…I have nothing to offer you. Nothing to give." He let out a weak sob of laughter, "Fuck, I am noth-"

The air whipped as Sherlock's hand moved like a flash to cover up his mouth before he could finish the word. "Don't you dare," Sherlock snarled. "Don't you dare say that."

"It's fine," John swallowed. "I…we missed it. Or I missed it when you were interested…" he winced at his words. "Not that I think you would be interested now anyway…and there are others…other flatmates, friends. Useful, interesting people. You don't need me."

Sherlock was utterly silent and then, with a strangled snarl of what sounded like so many emotions John couldn't begin to unravel it, Sherlock grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him up the stairs.

"Look," he said, pushing John through the door frame and crowding behind him as the light went on. "Look at that," he pointed to the map and gripped John shoulders forcing him to stand by it. "Does that look like I was looking for my 'friend' or 'colleague' or whatever ridiculous label you wish to use this week? I turned down cases, opportunities just to get you back. I have used every favour I have, begged every idiot in the country to help me. Does it look to you as if I am going to let you walk out of here?

"Does it look like I stopped wanting you? Needing you?"

John stared at the map, hating the treacherous hope that started to burn within.

"John, look at me."

Slowly John turned, his hand shaking, both of them shaking.

God he needed a hit.

"Don't concentrate on that, concentrate on me," Sherlock ordered, somehow knowing. "Look at me."

With more courage than he knew he still had, John raised his eyes to Sherlock's.

There was sorrow, endless sorrow in those mercurial eyes that had never been there before. Boldness and that endless searching look that Sherlock would always have.

But there was no pity or disgust.

There was something else though, something John had never really seen before in Sherlock's eyes and it made him want to…to…

"I don't know how to go back," John confessed.

Sherlock shook his head. "Never go back John." A hint of his old smile returned, "Backwards is dull."

John smiled weakly and took a deep breath.

* * *

They said one day at a time.

An hour at a time.

A minute at a time.

Never look ahead at the mountain and never look back at the slope.

One day at a time. One day, one hour, one task, one minute.

But during lonely nights when John's body buckled and shuddered as the drugs started to leave his system, he couldn't help but think about grey-green eyes that watched without pity and with utter faith.

It kept him going.

He had put faith in Sherlock Holmes' eyes. And that made him dig his fingers into the mattress, grit his teeth and ride out the withdrawal in the clinic Mycroft had insisted on.

One day at a time.

* * *

The sequel is "One Step Forward"


End file.
